Readers coming to this book at the beginning of the 21st Century may find our fear of the Communist Revolution bizarre. But in 1947 the threat seemed real enough. We had, at crippling cost, just won a war against Hitler to stop him dominating the world, and now the Soviet Union was sprawling over Eastern Europe and half of Germany, and boasting that Communism would bury capitalism. It is easy now to see that the giant had feet of clay, but at the time the size of the bear, his victories over Hitler's best troops, and his belligerence, could not easily be ignored. Meanwhile in Asia, Mao Tse Tung was thrashing the Chinese Nationalists; the French in Vietnam were finding it increasingly hard to contain the Vietcong, and Sukarno, having forced the Dutch out of the Netherlands East Indies, had allied himself with Communist China. You did not have to be a professional cold war warrior to conclude that Communism posed a serious threat. At a time when all round the world terrorism continues to defy civilised societies, it will be noted that in Malaya we defeated a strong terrorist force relying more on intelligence than on weaponry, and on brains as much as on courage. The Communist Party of Malaya or CPM led by Chin Peng operated from the deep jungles, using the arms and weapons left with the MPAJA by the retreating British forces. To destabilise Malaya’s economy, CPM resorted to brutal murder of innocents, barbaric torture of civilians kidnapping, arson, derailment of passenger trains and sabotage, among others. Chin Peng was no hero and he remains a terrorist in the minds of many Malays and Straits Chinese today. The enemy of my enemy is no longer my friend.

This is a true story of our forgotten war against Communism raging in the Jungles of post war 1948 Malaya alongside the war in Nam.